Thing 17

I thought that Delicious was a pretty cool tool. I like that you are able to share it with other people so that you can get ideas from other teachers. I think it is always good to  be open-minded and willing to see what other people have to say. I could see myself using this for ideas for my classroom. I am the type of person that likes to get ideas from others. It is also nice that you can access this from anywhere and not just one single computer. Teachers could take advantage of social bookmarking sites by putting there ideas out there for other people to use in their classroom. It is also a good way for teachers to keep their classrooms current. They would always have new ideas and know what is the trend and how to incorporate that into their classroom. I really liked how there were tags. That helped my transfer from one idea to another and branch off of that.

Thing 16

For my start page I chose Netvibes. Netvibes stuck out to me because you could make it your own. You didn't have to chose from an example homepage that they had, you could just type in any word and it would create one for you. I also like how it gave you a little tutorial as to how to use it once you signed up. I probably wouldn't use this as a homepage because I already have a set homepage that I don't want to change, but I would probably visit this page on a regular basis.

The online calendar was pretty cool. It already put in national holidays and what the temperature is for the next 5 days. This could be helpful so that when I do my lesson plans, I can have an idea for if I want to take the kids outside one day, or when they will have off school. I also like that this is always handy and right at the click of a button. The online calendar that I chose was MSN calendar.

I think that the to-do list could be helpful, but I would probably not use it. If you are the type of person that is always on the computer and likes to have everything documented, then I think that this would be a good idea, but I am not that type of person. It was cool  to be able to set it up and play around with setting up when different things are due. For me, it was kind of the same thing as having a planner, but I would rather have a planner to write in and carry around with me than a to-do list on the computer.

The tool that would probably be the most use to me would be the online calendar. I wouldn't use this as my calendar at home, but I would recommend it for teachers. I  think it is a great way to plan out what you are going to be doing each week in the classroom.

Thing 15

I always knew that anybody could add, delete, or change things on wiki, but I never knew how it was done. I enjoyed learning how to play around on it and getting a little more familiar with it. As a teacher, I could post a class page and let students and parents communicate with me that way. I could also get some awesome ideas from other teachers on wiki. Wiki was something that I had always known about, but never took the time to work with. Come to find out, it could be really helpful for me in the future.

Thing 14

I chose to us Gliffy as my flowchart and Bubbl.us as my mind map. I preferred to use the mind map because it helped me organize my thoughts better. When I used Bubbl.us, I liked that each level was determined by a specific color. Some of my sections would have a lot more ideas branched off of them than others, and sometimes I would get confused on where I was, so then I just looked at which one was what color. I used this to help me organize my research paper for another class and it was really helpful.

Thing 13

I started out just using Zoho Writer like I would typically use Microsoft Word. Once I got a little more comfortable with it, I realized that you could add shapes and all different kinds of things in there. This could be really beneficial for a teacher like me because I want to teach third grade math and I could use shapes in a lot of my worksheets that I print off and on tests. Zoho Writer would make it easier to compose these worksheets and tests on a regular basis.

The link to my Google Doc is: https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/18HtaftO7k8gaSw1HtljfaOa1_r3XeJK0p_-UEVRjViU/edit my students could use the program to work with new shapes and equations. In the document that I created, I just used shapes, but you can create equations and all kinds of things in there. I think that students would enjoy doing this because for one, they would probably like to change things up from using paper and a pencil all the time, and two because now a days technology is taking over the world. Kids love to use computers and play games, so this would be a fun activity to do with them, while they are learning at the same time.

I think that I would prefer to use Google Doc because you can do more things with it than Zoho. Even though Zoho would be very helpful, it is still pretty similar to Microsoft Word.

Thing 12

The two Google tools that I chose were Google Alerts and Google Translator. I chose Google Alerts because it is a really cool tool to keep you updated on whatever you want. For right now, I chose to get updates on the Chicago Cubs because I like to follow what they are doing,  but as a teacher, I will probably follow things related to teaching. I also like Google translator because you can use it to look up pretty much any language. A lot of times words have a Latin base, so you could look up the Latin base to figure out what that word really means. Both of these could be helpful as a teacher, but I think that I would use the Google Translator more than Google Alerts. http://www.google.com/alerts/manage?mqm=c&q=Chicago+Cubs&x=AMJHsmVDiJW3qcP3OQXWcfhWDvwwVSrvrg:1349726620099 is the link to my alerts for the Chicago Cubs.

Thing 11

I liked the link to http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/ It was helpful because it gave me a start off to some really good links related to teaching. Once on that website, I looked for links like lessons plans and 12 Ways To Teach During the Crazy Days of Christmas. The one that was more complicated for me was http://www.topix.net/ because it didn't show me links that were specific to me. In my findings, I got some great tips on how to keep focus on days where the kids are crazy and some really cool ideas on lesson plans. I found that by going through other people's blogs, I found some great links that are helpful to me.